Yes, you do think that other cultures are 'better' - or 'more accepting'
which is still is valuative judgement, and you said that in a positive way
- because you said it in black-and-white two posts ago ... ah, but I'm a
mere Westerner who's less accepting ...
Performing and creating are, for me, two separate things. I build this car,
now I drive it. They function seperately. In creating, there is, for me, no
view of the other, the one who is essential for the performance to take
place. When I have dug my music or words out of me, it's then that the
'other' hoves in to view, part of the post-rationalising process. It is only
when one conscious - or not - of the other that the performance begins i.e.
when the poem is delivered to the reader who is not the writer. It takes two
to tango, and that is a performance in artistic terms. For me, the creator
will always have that special attachment to their created work which
pre-cludes them for the magic of performance ... which I think your
over-arching definition de-values. But then I'm not in the business of
crusading for 'performance'.
Regards
Roger
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 12:30 PM, cris cheek <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Roger,
>
> i am being boring actually, because i've said this same sort of thing for
> years and i'm still alone in thinking it.
>
> i'm not sure how much i can add. I don't think that some cultures are
> better than others at all, in terms of poetry. I am saying that poetry
> performs both on and off the page and i am seeking to blur that old chestnut
> of a binary held up by scholars such as Walter Ong, between orality and
> literacy. Poetry was a complex activity from the get go and much of its
> history has occurred between sits of performance. Those whole skeins of
> poetic history that you refer to are, i agree, utterly fascinating in their
> complex. In many many instances that complexity involves a sense of voice
> that does not leave the body and that voice that does leave the body (the
> voice in the head as one reads what is on the page and the voice in one's
> head when one listens to a poem read by another and the voice one produces
> when one reads a poem out loud - one written by you as well as one written
> by another but being rewritten by you in those moments et cetera). These are
> all, i contest, performances of the poem.
>
> I do go further and assert, at least in my more oring moment, that the
> composition of a poem is itself a performance. Rather than rendering the
> word performance meaningless it seems to me to remove the word performance
> from being a potentially derisory term for poetry and instead suggests that
> there are differing kinds of performance. Those differences, those
> complexities, those skeins, allow for conversations about performance to
> take on more subtlety.
>
> Maybe i can reframe this as a question to you . . in what ways does poetry
> not perform on the page and / or if that is not clear enough . in what way
> is what we find on the page not a notation for eye and ear . and more
> besides???
>
>
> cris
>
>
> On Oct 28, 2011, at 2:46 AM, Roger Day wrote:
>
> > No you're not being boring but you are eliding whole skeins of
> interesting
> > history and culture to homogenize it to your own particular view point.
> IMO,
> > you are ascending olympia one step at a time and using that old punk
> excuse
> > to pretend you're not.
> >
> > Clearly, you think that some cultures are 'better' than others when it
> comes
> > to this touchy subject, otherwise you wouldn't have make that remark
> about
> > 'non-western' - I'm interested in hearing on what criteria you come to
> this
> > conclusion.
> >
> > I'm reminded of Terry Eagleton's remark about 'ideology' - if you think
> that
> > eveything is based around ideology, then the word 'ideology' becomes
> > meaningless. I think that when you use your word performance to embrace
> all
> > of of poetical practice, 'performance' becomes meaningless ...
> >
> > Regards
> > Roger
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 12:19 PM, cris cheek <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >> indd Roger
> >>
> >> i'm being boring
> >>
> >> i'm saying, again, that poetry has a long history of performing on and
> off
> >> the page
> >>
> >> and that in many cultures the page still does not pertain
> >>
> >> they are not mutually exclusive
> >>
> >> they support the same premise
> >>
> >> where there is not a page the poem in in the body, the mouth the air the
> >> ear and the memory of the listener
> >>
> >> where there is a a page the poem is both on it and off it (one might say
> >> that they take part in differing models of communication . one ritual
> and
> >> the other transmission)
> >>
> >> sometimes when it is off the page (perhaps it is both indeed there is a
> lot
> >> of that about ;=0) then it approaches other art forms . . unsurprising .
> .
> >> song, for exmle, and monologue and drama and stand up and live art et al
> >>
> >>
> >> what i often hear and i was hearing it again but perhaps it was my fault
> >> for mishearing it . is the sense that either is somehow somehow superior
> >>
> >> or more evolved or more sophisticated or more complex or more generally
> a
> >> subject of disdain
> >>
> >> and as an old punk i am more inclined to force my head up my ass under
> such
> >> circumstances
> >>
> >>
> >> cris
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Oct 27, 2011, at 6:54 AM, Roger Day wrote:
> >>
> >>> Oh, cris. Your Olympian view is so ... bracing. But what do you mean,
> >>> 'non-western'? I don't understand ... I thought, like Dave, that the
> >> 'west'
> >>> - whatever that is - still has some idea of multiple performances of a
> >> poem
> >>> ...
> >>>
> >>> Didn't Tennyson do one of the first wax cylinder recordings?
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 7:37 AM, David Bircumshaw <
> >> [log in to unmask]
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> cris cheek wrote on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:25:19 -0400
> >>>>
> >>>> " . . but since it's clear that poetry has for several thousand years
> >> been
> >>>> (in many cultures) integrally implicated in the deveopments of
> >> performance,
> >>>> from early epic through the mead halls into contemporary rap . the
> >>>> non-western acceptance that poetry is to be enjoyed both through
> reading
> >> on
> >>>> the page and being explored off the page
> >>>>
> >>>> what on earth is the problem here?
> >>>>
> >>>> point-scoring is as addled a past-time in respect of poetry on the
> page
> >> as
> >>>> off the page"
> >>>>
> >>>> I agree, point-scoring poetry is an addled pastime, so in what context
> >>>> would
> >>>> anyone want to 'quantify' 'quality' in poetry? Which was the question
> >>>> asked.
> >>>>
> >>>> Other than that, I am interested in your version of literary history,
> >> this
> >>>> one where say Tennyson or Dylan Thomas or Wordsworth rejected the
> >>>> performing
> >>>> of poetry, as did the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, or the
> whole
> >> of
> >>>> Russian poetry, or Lorca, or Miguel Hernandez, while that most
> literary
> >> and
> >>>> textual poetic culture in China has presumably migrated across a
> >>>> continent.
> >>>>
> >>>> best
> >>>>
> >>>> dave
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> David Joseph Bircumshaw
> >>>> "The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the
> universe
> >> is
> >>>> that none of it has tried to contact us."
> >>>> - Calvin & Hobbes
> >>>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> >>>> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> >>>> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> >>>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
> >>>> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
> >>>> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
> >>>>
> >>
>
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